My Moron got a Cloak of Invisibility and I got banned (sort of) de

[Stargaze]

So Freya, my new Enchantress, is getting along quite well. After I found my stash again, I gave her a full Sigons as soon as possible to speed things up. That might be cheesy, but hey, I hate that first steps with a Sorceress. Besides, I got enough Sorceresses through Normal that I don't miss much if I cover that step at light speed.

But this isn't about Freya, this is about Chalan the Moron. And about me.

Freya was happily slaughtering the minions of the High Council in Kurast when the magical fire on her weapon went out. So, she enchanted her weapon again and turned around to do the same to her trusted companion's spear. But lo and behold! - he was nowhere to be seen! 'Chalan!' she called, and again 'Chalan! We don't have time for these games of yours! You heard what Sir Cain the Chatterbox told us. We have some Demons to kill. We can play hide and seek later, OK?'. It helped nothing.
She wandered around calling his name, and suddenly she heard him laughing 'Right beside you!' and he appeared out of nothing a meter to her left. She let her swordarm drop, which she had raised instinctively. But as she approached him to enchant his weapon, he grinned, closed his robe - and vanished right before her eyes.
'OK, you fool' she said, and jumped to the place where he last stood. She jumped into air. Angrily, she prepared to cast a Static Field to shock him. Then, she cought a movement in her eyes. Not a moment too soon she turned to face one of the Zakarum priests who seemingly had tried to take advantage of the situation. His Dagger had amost pierced her cloth, as out of nothing a Spearhead appeared and plunged deep into the priests body. Soon after, the priest was no more and Freya said 'Thank you. Err ... Chalan, where did you get this ... thing?'. 'That crazy Ormus guy back in Port Kurast said he had no need for this, so he gave it to me. So, can we go now?'.

Lucky for me, Freya had her magical imp-driven camera with her, so I can show you here. According to the map, Chalan should stand right beside Freya.

So ... did this happen to anyone else? Does someone know what causes this? Is it dangerous?

Another thing I can't explain happened to me. So I wnated to have a look into the Moron guide linked in the FAQ list. What I got was a white page saying 'You are banned.'. Checking some more I discovered, that all links to the Strategic Compendium produce that effect. Not enough, even when I enter the SC, whenever I click on an article I get the same result. Is that me (and if so, what have I done?) or does everyone get this.

[Cattleya]

The merc thing is a graphical bug that has been around since at least 1.10, but it seems to get reported a lot more since 1.11 came out. Aside from the annoyance of trying to Enchant him, it shouldn't cause any problems.

I can view the Strategy Compendium fine, so um, I don't know what's up with that...

[DIIRob]

I find that my hireling will disappear/reappear at times. I also find that my hireling will vanish completely (not attacking; not present at all) if I walk excessively versus run. Funny how you can never out-run your hireling as he will teleport to catch up, but you can out-walk him, as he will [seemingly] not teleport. I can only regain my hireling upon teleporting in some way, be it via the teleport skill or the use of a portal.

Quite a serious bug if you ask me!

[pharaoh]

Regarding the 'you are banned' thing, besides a forum bug of some sort, I can only think of one explanation: on banning someone from the forums, the admins may (I don't know for sure, as I've never been banned) block you by user name and IP address. If this is the case, then when your ISP recycles addresses (as they all do), you could conceivably get the address of a person who had previously been banned, or a similar one, which could cause problems if the admins ban a group of addresses (such as all those from a given provider). If you share a connection to the internet through a LAN at work or school, this could also happen, as the banned address could be the IP of the gateway router, thus banning everyne on the network.

[LowLander]

On my strafer it happens all the time, and even weirder: The blue "X" also dissappears from the map when it happens. I only know he's still there because I see his "circle of light" beside me, plus I can open the merc inventory screen.

Bloody irritating, especially when it happens in the Chaos Sanctuary, and you can't keep tabs on his stupid a** running around IM'd. I'll post a screeny when I'm home.

[Stargaze]

I am happy to announce that Chalan has not tried to be funny again.

As for the banned thing, I don't think it has to do with an IP ban of some kind, as I can not reach the CS from home or from work, but can access the forums from both. I think I must approach Elly or whoever is in charge now in this matter.